but here you go:
14
1.2 The New Strategic Communication Environment
Anti-American attitudes. Opinion surveys conducted by Zogby International, the Pew
Research Center, Gallup (CNN/USA Today), and the Department of State (INR) reveal
widespread animosity toward the United States and its policies. A year and a half after
15
going to war in Iraq, Arab/Muslim anger has intensified. Data from Zogby International
in July 2004, for example, show that the U.S. is viewed unfavorably by overwhelming
majorities in Egypt (98 percent), Saudi Arabia (94 percent), Morocco (88 percent), and
Jordan (78 percent). The war has increased mistrust of America in Europe, weakened
support for the war on terrorism, and undermined U.S. credibility worldwide. Media
commentary is consistent with polling data. In a State Department (INR) survey of
editorials and op-eds in 72 countries, 82.5 % of commentaries were negative, 17.5%
positive.3
Negative attitudes and the conditions that create them are the underlying sources of
threats to America’s national security and reduced ability to leverage diplomatic
opportunities. Terrorism, thin coalitions, harmful effects on business, restrictions on
travel, declines in cross border tourism and education flows, and damaging consequences
for other elements of U.S. soft power are tactical manifestations of a pervasive
atmosphere of hostility.
Although many observers correlate anti-Americanism with deficiencies in U.S. public
diplomacy (its content, tone, and competence), the effectiveness of the means used to
influence public opinion is only one metric. Policies, conflicts of interest, cultural
differences, memories, time, dependence on mediated information, and other factors
shape perceptions and limit the effectiveness of strategic communication.
Perceptions of public diplomacy in crisis. Since the Defense Science Board’s October
2001 Task Force study, more than 15 private sector and Congressional reports have
examined public diplomacy: the Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy for the Arab and
3 Impressions of America 2004: How Arabs View America; How Arabs Learn About America, Zogby
International, July 2004; Views of a Changing World 2003: War With Iraq Further Divides Global Publics,
Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, June 3, 2004; A Year After Iraq War Mistrust of America
in Europe Ever Higher, Muslim Anger Persists, Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, March 16,
2004; Iraq One Year Later: Global Media Assessment Largely Negative, U.S. Department of State, Office
of Research, April 29, 2004; Views from the Muslim World: Opposition to U.S. Foreign Policy Contrasts
with Admiration for American Innovation and Education, U.S. Department of State Office of Research,
March 31, 2003.
16
Muslim World (“Djerejian group”), the Council on Foreign Relations, The Heritage
Foundation, The Brookings Institution, The Aspen Institute, the Public Diplomacy
Institute, the Center for the Study of the Presidency, and several reports each by the U.S.
Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, the U.S. General Accounting Office, and
Congressional committees.4
There is consensus in these reports that U.S. public diplomacy is in crisis.5 Missing are
strong leadership, strategic direction, adequate coordination, sufficient resources, and a
culture of measurement and evaluation. America’s image problem, many suggest, is
linked to perceptions of the United States as arrogant, hypocritical, and self-indulgent.
There is agreement too that public diplomacy could be a powerful asset with stronger
Presidential leadership, Congressional support, inter-agency coordination, partnership
with the private sector, and resources (people, tools, structures, programs, funding).
Solutions lie not in short term, manipulative public relations. Results will depend on
fundamental transformation of strategic communication instruments and a sustained long
term, approach at the level of ideas, cultures, and values.
The number and depth of these reports indicate widespread concern among influential
observers that something must be done about public diplomacy. But so far these
concerns have produced no real change. The White House has paid little attention.
Congressional actions have been limited to informational hearings and funding for
Middle East broadcasting initiatives, Radio Sawa and Al Hurra. State Department and
Broadcasting Board of Governors responses to Congress and the General Accounting
Office (GAO) were not at the strategic level.
One limitation of these post-9/11 studies is that most did not look comprehensively at
civilian and military strategic communication assets. Several called for strategic
4 These reports are listed in Appendix E
5 Barry Fulton, Taking the Pulse of American Public Diplomacy in a Post-9/11 World, Paper presented at
the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, Montreal, March 18, 2004.
17
direction by the White House or the NSC. Some examined only State Department public
diplomacy programs, others U.S. international broadcasting, others both.
Terrorism as a national security frame. The events of September 11, 2001 were a
catalyst in creating a new way to think about national security. The Global War on
Terrorism replaced the Cold War as a national security meta narrative. Governments,
media, and publics use the terrorism frame for cognitive, evaluative, and communication
purposes. For political leaders, it is a way to link disparate events; identify priorities,
friends, enemies, victims, and blame; and shape simple coherent messages. For
journalists and news consumers the terrorism frame conflates and appears to make sense
of diverse national security stories – Al Qaeda, Jihadists, Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, Iran,
Chechnya, Indonesia, Kashmir, the Philippines, Kenya, Spain.6
Frames simplify and help to communicate complex events. But like the Cold War frame,
the terrorism frame marginalizes other significant issues and problems: failing states,
non-proliferation, HIV/AIDS pandemic, economic globalization, transnational threats
other than terrorism, and global warming. Often the terrorism frame directs attention to
tactics not strategy. The focus is more on capturing and killing terrorists than attitudinal,
political, and economic forces that are the underlying source of threats and opportunities
in national security.
Volatile Islam. Islam’s internal and external struggle over values, identity, and change is
the dominant political arena in which strategic communication takes place. Analysts
differ on causes and consequences. But there is widespread agreement that terrorist
networks are symptomatic of a broader transformation within Islam and a continuation of
the 20th century conflict between tolerance and totalitarianism. Islam’s crisis must be
understood as a contest of ideas and engaged accordingly.7
6 Pippa Norris, Montague Kern, and Marion Just, eds., Framing Terrorism: The News Media, the
Government, and the Public, (Routledge, 2003); Robert M. Entman, Projections of Power: Framing News,
Public Opinion, and U.S. Foreign Policy, (The University of Chicago Press, 2004).
7 The literature on the struggle of ideas in Islam substantial. Particularly useful for strategic
communication are Cheryl Benard, Civil Democratic Islam: Partners, Resources, and Strategies, Rand
18
Islam’s struggle raises critical considerations for strategic communication:
• The contest of ideas is taking place not just in Arab and other Islamic countries but in
the cities and villages of Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Western Hemisphere.
• U.S. policies on Israeli-Palestinian issues and Iraq in 2003-2004 have damaged
America’s credibility and power to persuade.
• The hostile atmosphere in which terrorists act is reinforced by religious messages,
sophisticated media strategies, and advanced information technologies.
• Regimes based on consent may be intolerant and oppose U.S. policies.
• More sophisticated influence and attitudinal segmentation models are needed.
• Strategists face difficult trade-offs in determining feasible choices and funding
priorities in using persuasive, cooperative, and coercive instruments of power.8
New Arab Media. Satellite television, FM radio, international newspapers edited in
London and transmitted by satellite for printing in capitals throughout the Arab world,
and growing Internet penetration are creating a complex Arab media environment no
longer dominated by state-sponsored media. Qatar’s Al Jazeera, launched in 1996, is the
best known satellite TV network, but Saudi MBC, Lebanon’s LBC-al Hayat, Abu Dhabi
TV, Dubai-based Al Arabiya and other stations are contesting Al Jazeera with lively
news and talk shows that spark political argument in homes and cafes throughout the
Middle East.9
Greater amounts of real time information and decreasing costs are severely challenging
state censors and changing the ways governments interact with their citizens. Arabs in
the region and in Arab diasporas throughout the world increasingly see and read the same
information with consequences for Arab self-identity. Although Internet use in the
Corporation, 2003; Michael Vlahos, Terror’s Mask: Insurgency Within Islam, Applied Physics Laboratory,
Johns Hopkins University, 2002; Paul Berman, Terror and Liberalism, (W.W. Norton & Company, 2003);
Changing Minds, Winning Peace, Report of the (Djerejian) Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy for the
Arab and Muslim World, October 1, 2003,
http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/24882.pdf.8
The Task Force addresses many of these issues in Chapters 2 and 3 of this report.
9
Marc Lynch, “Taking Arabs Seriously,” Foreign Affairs, September/October, 2003, pp. 81-94; William
A. Rugh, Arab Mass Media: Newspapers, Radio, and Television in Arab Politics, (Praeger, 2004).
19
Middle East is the lowest in the world, this digital divide is narrowing, and cyberspace is
an arena for both conflict and conflict resolution in the region. These new Arab media
are creating the frames within which people understand and misunderstand events and
U.S. political goals.
Global transparency. Al Jazeera, CNN, and other television networks dominate
discussion of the information and media environment. But a host of information
technologies — in addition to satellite TV — are creating greater global transparency:
cell phones, wireless handhelds, videophones, camcorders, digital cameras, miniaturized
fly away units used by TV crews in remote locations, high resolution commercial space
imaging, blogs, and email. Many are cheap; costs are declining.10
These technologies have consequences for all three stakeholders in strategic
communication: governments, media, and publics. Policymakers, diplomats, and
military leaders face more breaking news from more places in a reactive mode.
Journalists rely less on “institutionally based news” (i.e., official sources, press
conferences). Publics (i.e., NGOs, image activists, soldiers with digital cameras) can
drive perceptions and policies with pictures and stories.
Transparency creates threats and opportunities – and changes in the strategy/tactics
dynamic. Tactical events can instantly become strategic problems (digital cameras in
Abu Ghraib). On the other hand, transparency can show strategic threats more clearly
and enhance the capacity to undercut an opponent’s political will and ability to mislead
(embedded media in Iraq).
Transparency is only one element in a global environment characterized also by faster
rates of change, shorter reaction times, asymmetry, interconnectivity, decentralization,
disintermediation, declining communication costs, content/transport disconnects, multiple
channels, more narrowcasting, Internet penetration at rates exceeding earlier
10 Steven Livingston, “Diplomacy in the New Information Environment,” Georgetown Journal of
International Affairs, Summer/Fall 2003, pp. 111-116.
technologies, greater volumes of information in less time, pervasive feelings of
saturation, short news and memory cycles, digital divides, and interactive tensions
between fragmenting consequences of conflict and integrative effects of cooperation.
There are critical consequences for strategic communication. New information
technologies often separate information from the sender’s identity and the social frames
that provide credibility and meaning. Social context on the Internet, for example, is not
self-evident. Nor is the identity of those who generate information.11 Terrorists use
websites in ways that mask their agendas. Their web-based narratives usually do not
celebrate violence so as to elicit sympathy and resonate with supporters.
Information saturation means attention, not information, becomes a scarce resource.
Power flows to credible messengers. Asymmetrical credibility matters. What's around
information is critical. Reputations count. Brands are important. Editors, filters, and cue
givers are influential. Fifty years ago political struggles were about the ability to control
and transmit scarce information. Today, political struggles are about the creation and
destruction of credibility.12
Strategic communicators need to understand this new information environment, train for
it, and deal with it.
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